Over the past academic year, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences’ faculty received a significant number of grant awards to support innovative research across the disciplines. These grants helped further groundbreaking projects in physics, molecular biology, psychology, nuclear science and much more. The following are recent major awards of $100,000 and above.
Andrei Alexandru (Physics): $285,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy for his project on Qcd, the theory of the strong interaction between quarks and gluons, involving quantum simulators and computers.
David R. Braun (Anthropology): $245,600 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for collaborative research on ecosystem change in the Turkana Basin in East Africa.
Christopher Brick (History): $160,000 from the National Archives and Records Administration to support the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project.
Leah Brooks (Public Policy & Public Affairs): $155,000 from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to study the impact of e-commerce on retail entrepreneurship.
Christopher Cahill (Chemistry): $750,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy to support the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium’s research and development in nuclear science, engineering and security.
Stephanie Riegg Cellini (Public Policy & Public Administration): $113,800 from Arnold Ventures to research how the relationship between the cost of obtaining a college degree and graduates’ future earnings can be used as a measure of accountability in higher education.
Dante Chinni (Media and Public Affairs): $650,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study how policymakers understand cultural, socioeconomic and political changes at the local level.
Ana Maria del Rio Gonzalez (Psychology): $1,049,100 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for Juntas Adelante, a peer-coaching intervention program to promote the HIV-prevention drug chemoprophylaxis among Latina transgender women in the Washington. D.C.-area.
Michael Doering (Physics): $360,000 from NSF for a resonance studies project involving large amplitude vibrations that are caused by a relatively small stimulus.
Evangeline Downie (Physics): $550,000 from NSF for a project to investigate the nucleon using electromagnetic probes.
Ioannis Eleftherianos (Biology): $809,700 from NSF to study the role of certain molecules as regulators of immune and metabolic responses to parasitic roundworm infections.
Keryn Gedan (Biology): $524,400 from NSF for collaborative research on “Coastal Critical Zones,” processes that transform landscapes and fluxes between land and sea.
Ling Hao (Chemistry): $1,323,400 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the development of mass spectrometry strategies for examining frontotemporal dementia.
Neil Johnson (Physics): $3,278,500 from the U.S. Department of Defense for a project to examine digitally connective actions for addressing global political systems; and $345,000 from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to study multiscale dynamics and extreme events in complex systems and networks.
Dwight Jacob Kravitz (Psychological and Brain Sciences): $723,300 from NSF to study the neural dynamics of memory maintenance.
Huynh-Nhu Le (Psychology): $114,600 from MedStar Georgetown Hospital and the Clark Foundation for integrating mental health care in pregnancy.
Chang Liu (Psychology): $135,300 from NIH to identify dynamic change processes in growth trajectories from infancy to early adolescence.
Weiqun Peng (Physics): $337,600 from the Hackensack Center for Discovery and Innovation to study differentiation among human T-cells.
Chet Sherwood (Anthropology): $458,800 from NSF to conduct collaborative research on the development and evolution of primate brains.
Janet Steele (Media & Public Affairs): $124,000 from the U.S. Department of State to host the Distinguished Humphrey Fellowship Program on Media and Information.
Dmitry Streletskiy (Geography): $328,700 from NSF to study coastal ocean sustainability in changing climates; $305,954 from NSF for a project on navigating convergent pressures on Arctic development; and $299,382 from NSF to study rapid Arctic environmental changes and implications for well-being, resilience and evolution of Arctic communities.
Nicholas White (Physics): $211,900 from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to study Gamma-Ray bursts and afterglow emissions.
Note: Dollar figures are rounded to the nearest thousand.